THE PROSPETIC PROJECT: A PIONEER LATIN-AMERICAN INITIATIVE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPORT USING INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES
C. Peña de Carrillo1, S. Gómez Ardila2, C. Mejia Corredor2, R. Fabregat Gesa2
1 Universidad Industrial de Santander (COLOMBIA)
2 Universitat de Girona (SPAIN)
Nowadays the use of the Information and Communication Technologies in the educational processes not only has enabled the thematic content management, but that have taken step to the educative innovation centered in the student. Nevertheless, and according to the appreciations of Gilbert Paquette, building a didactic material for the Web that fulfills these expectations is a complex process and requires of methods for the design, development and planning of the distribution of learning systems half-full by computer that integrate concepts, processes and principles of the instructional design, the software engineering and the cognitive modeled. The Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS-Colombia) has taken a great step with a view to consolidating and to institutionalize these initiatives, which also they have been verified by experts UIS in the area, that judiciously and of progressive way we have dedicated the last years to design and to apply with base on ICTs, new methodologies that favor the educational innovation, motivate the learning with sense, allow the formation of high quality professionals and add value to the research processes, technological transference and integration of the university with the society. The ProSPETIC project is the result of this concerted effort. By means of the definition of an institutional policy, the UIS academic directive has allowed the design of strategies tending to assure conditions for the development of learning experiences with high quality standards. The first of these strategies was oriented to offer the necessary physical and technological infrastructure to support the university academic programs development using ICTs and the consolidation of institutional missionary functions like teaching, researching and the continuous formation. The Information and Communication Technologies Center is an intelligent and modern building that begun working in 2007 and was designed with that purpose. With 30 computer science rooms (1100 computers that complement the 600 computers distributed in similar rooms of faculty schools), resources for high performance computing, high speed data network, interactive videoconference, research, development and innovation lab in education supported by ICTs and human resource for the pedagogical and methodological support, technological development, graphical design and multimedia production are conjugated to favor the growth of the university digital culture. A great group of voluntary professors and students also works together as thematic experts or auxiliary developers to create educational products, that in the field of the qualification consisted in digital alphabetization processes and in the field of the didactic material are transformation of traditional curricula to formation by competences curricula for active and customized learning and learning objects. A more complex process has become another one of the strategies for the ProSPETIC establishment and involves the development of the institutional e-learning environment named e-escen@ri, supported by the instructional engineering, the adaptive hypermedia and the multiagent frameworks premises.